You mentioned your fight choreography—what kind of training did you do?
Infinite training. I did a lot of straight-up conditioning because you have to be in much better shape than you think to get through hours and hours of stunt choreography, particularly in a full suit of armor and a cape. We broke the first law of Edna Mode—I am absolutely wearing a cape, and it’s fabulous. It doesn’t make the fighting easier, but it does make it fancier. That is the rule of cool and the rule of paladins.
To answer your question: loads and loads of training. Lots and lots of time spent learning stances and various sequences and techniques. I spent hours in the stunt tent with the stunt team. I had a fantastic stunt double who worked as my mentor, who walked me through all kinds of things that got me into the shape I needed to be in, and made me feel bad because he was in such incredible shape. There’s always a healthy competition with your stunt team, because the ideal position for me to be in is for him to be very unhappy, on the sidelines, not doing the stunt, because I’m doing the stunt. And so you love each other, but you want to keep each other unhappy in that way.
Can you talk a bit about the special effects?
The joy of this movie is that most of the time, [we were] acting with something, because we had a very, very sophisticated practical effects department. There were loads of real-life mechanized creatures, and animatronics, and puppetry in a very, modern 21st century way. I never acted with a tennis ball; there were Dragonborn, there were tabaxi, there were all kinds of crazy creatures in the world.
Half the time, you’ll see a pile of barrels in the back of the shot, and there’ll be a guy behind there with an incredibly sophisticated remote control who’s controlling the creature that you’re having a conversation with, to the most minor facial and muscle twitches. It was incredible to see a foot in front of my face, nevermind what you’ll see on screen. It’s a gift for an actor; it makes life not only easier, but just that bit more magical—which, isn’t that what Dungeons & Dragons is all about?
